Brad Garlinghouse Joins Ripple Labs as Company's First Chief Operating Officer

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 16, 2015) - Ripple Labs today announced that it has appointed Brad Garlinghouse as the company's first Chief Operating Officer. The former Hightail CEO and longtime Yahoo! executive brings a history of disciplined growth and execution to the newly created position.

"We are very excited to have Brad join the team," said Ripple Labs CEO and co-founder Chris Larsen. "Brad's experience will be invaluable as we advance our focus from building a strong pipeline to execution and exceptional growth. We share a vision for the future of finance and the creation of an Internet of Value in which value exchange is as fast, free, transparent, and secure as information exchange is on the Internet today."

Prior to serving as CEO of Hightail, formerly known as YouSendIt, Garlinghouse was the President of Applications and Commerce at AOL. During a six year tenure at Yahoo!, he held a number of senior roles. Previously, he spent time as a Partner at @Ventures and in business development at @Home Network. Garlinghouse serves on the boards of Ancestry.com, Animoto, and Tonic for Health. He holds a BA from the University of Kansas and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

"Ripple Labs is an incredible team, all joined by a shared passion to change the world -- the energy, commitment and expertise is unmatched," said Garlinghouse. "There is already incredible momentum for Ripple as a new infrastructure for global payments, and the opportunity to define the actual framework for the Internet of Value is an order of magnitude bigger than anything else underway in payments today." 

Ripple Labs is the global leader in distributed financial technology and standards. The team supports the adoption of Ripple, a settlement protocol that enables the world's disparate financial networks to securely transfer funds in any currency in real time. Banks, money transmitters and clearing houses can use Ripple as an alternative to correspondent banking to facilitate straight-through processing with no reserve funding required. Earthport, the largest open network for global bank payments, and three banks in the United States and Germany recently announced Ripple integrations.

Ripple was created to enable the world to move value as easily as information moves today, giving rise to an Internet of Value (IoV) akin to today's Internet of Knowledge. For more information about Ripple Labs, please visit http://www.ripplelabs.com. For more information about Ripple, please visit http://www.ripple.com. 

About Ripple Labs
Ripple Labs is the global leader on distributed financial technology. The team supports adoption of the Ripple protocol, an Internet of Value (IoV) that enables the free and instant exchange of anything of value. The San Francisco-based startup is funded by Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, IDG Capital Partners, Core Innovation Capital, FF Angel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bitcoin Opportunity Corp. and Vast Ventures.

Named one of 2014's 50 Smartest Companies by MIT Technology Review, Ripple Labs' team of 100 is comprised of deeply experienced cryptographers, security experts, distributed network developers, Silicon Valley and Wall Street veterans. They contribute code to the open-source software, as well as develop tools for and recruit financial institutions and payment networks to use Ripple. The team shepherds a movement to evolve finance so that payment systems are open, secure, constructive and globally inclusive.

About Ripple
Ripple is an Internet protocol that interconnects all the world's disparate financial systems to power the secure transfer of funds in any currency in real time -- enabling an Internet of Value (IoV). As settlement infrastructure, Ripple transforms and enhances today's financial systems. Ripple unlocks assets and provides access to payment systems for everyone, empowering the world to move value like information moves today. For more information about Ripple, please visit http://www.ripple.com.